We can’t say we were overwhelmingly convinced with Samsung’s bada smartphone OS back when we reviewed the Wave S8500, the handset’s high-end specs doing most of the wowing, so we’ll be interested to see how a more affordable model fares. Samsung has just outed the Wave 723 (GT-S7320E), apparently intended to further “democritize” the smartphone market, with a 3.2-inch WQVGA LCD display, 5-megapixel camera and dualband UMTS/HSPA.

There’s also Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi b/g/n and A-GPS, together with 90MB of internal storage and a microSD card slot. Unfortunately there isn’t the same high-end A/V codec support as we’ve seen on other recent Samsung handsets; the Wave 723 makes do with MPEG4, H.263 and H.264, eschewing DivX and Xvid.

Still, it’s a more entry-level step into bada ownership, if that’s something you really want, together with the fledgling bada application store. No word on pricing, but Samsung says the Wave 723 will arrive in Germany next month, followed by broader European availability, Asia and Africa.